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Cemetery
Chapels, Downham Market

I think that it was the
architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner who observed
that the town of Downham Market was not as
interesting as Swaffham, a comparison not
particularly fair to either place. In any event, despite
their proximity to each other, the two are very
different. Swaffham is typical of those wealthy
provincial East Anglian market towns which rode high on
the hog's back during the 18th Century, and which have
the architectural heritage to show for it. Downham Market
has more the air of a working town which was particularly
busy in the 19th Century. We are far enough west here for
carstone to be replacing flint, and white brick to be
replacing red brick.

Downham
Market's Victorian cemetery sits a little to the
south of the Anglican parish church, and it is
typical of 19th Century civic pride, but on a
small scale, like a reflection of the town it
once served. Here are the two identical cemetery
chapels, one for the Anglicans and one for the
non-conformists, and here is the
cemetery-keeper's cottage, now a private
dwelling. And above all, here are the grand
memorials to 19th Century worthies, the aldermen
and the factory owners, the solicitors and the
bank managers, and their wives and children,
their imposing monuments surrounded by iron
railings, their ornate and precise inscriptions
fading beneath bulging Classical urns and
towering Gothic spires.

To the east
spread the smaller lichened stone gravemarkers of
the lower middle classes: the shopkeepers and the
land agents, the chief clerks and the railway
officials, huddling together and disappearing
into the darkness beneath the trees. And all
around, invisible, are the Downham Market poor in
their unmarked graves.